She's My
by The Frisky Firelily
Summary: The crew reflect on what River is to each of them. Post-BDM.
1. Albatross

**TITLE:** She's My Albatross

**DISCLAIMER:** Not mine.

**A/N:** Man I just can't seem to get Occasions finished, I keep getting distracted! Just a little reflection on what our resident psychic is to each of her fellow crewmembers.

She's my albatross. My strange mix of good luck and bad luck rolled all into one. She confuses me with bizarre words that only make sense after I've got a bullet in my leg or a whore going into labour. It's taken time, but I'm learning to stop, to decipher, to figure out what each of her peculiar little snippets of information mean. She's the daughter I've never asked for and now couldn't live without, the ward I gained through chance and couldn't imagine losing. She's a reason to misbehave, one of many, a unifying example of everything wrong with the Alliance and everything truly incredible in the 'verse. She's my albatross.

She tiptoes through my ship on dirty feet and foreign humming, a source of endless irritation and an inspirer of adoration. She is innocent and young, lost and confused, needing shelter and support. She is ancient and wise, seeing things others couldn't imagine, fighting harder than a young girl should ever have to. And she keeps fighting, keeps protecting, keeps surprising, keeps inspiring that strange blend of irritation and joy.

Because she's my albatross.

"Yes, but I still like to hear you say it."

She still likes to know I want to explain, I want to impart knowledge, I want to fulfil this fatherly role I've stumbled upon. She lets me instruct her, asks questions I know she already knows the answer to simply because she likes it when I work hard to give her the information. She likes having someone who wants to teach her, even if she should probably be the one teaching me.

It's easier now to listen, to attempt to work through the convoluted and sometimes barely coherent wisdom she tries to impart on me. But after seeing a girl barely out of puberty fight harder and better than anyone I ever saw in the war I'm willing to try. And it helps, it always helps. Even when she's saying those weird snippets of poems or mumbling about colours and Latin it still helps. It just takes time. Sometimes lots of time, many hours of reading and dissembling, but she always smiles at me proudly when I finally work out the warning, and she's never failed me yet.

She lets me get angry with her and discipline her, always nodding solemnly when I send her to her room for throwing soup in Jayne's hair for the third time in one week. Always letting me be the Daddy she never really had, always acquiescing to her elder. I asked Simon once why she behaved so often for me, especially after I'd seen her simply laugh when he tried to boss her around himself. He'd just given me a strange look and shrugged.

"Because she loves you."

The words had shaken me to the core, crystallizing suddenly the true nature of the family I've collected on my boat. She wanted me happy, wanted me to let her stay, wanted my approval. I've lead hundreds of men into bloody and brutal battle, I've seen the most cowardly of them take up arms at my orders. Zoe had once said something about being a born leader, Inara called it pigheaded loyalty. But only the girl had ever done it for love.

Damned if I didn't go straight to her room and tell her she could come right out and do whatever she wanted.

'Cuz I reckon I might love her back. How could I not?

She's my albatross.


	2. Ballerina

**TITLE:** She's My Ballerina

**DISCLAIMER:** Not mine.

She's my ballerina. She's my connection to a world that is seemingly farther and farther away with each passing day. A last remaining link to grace and civility and beauty. And a reminder of the secrets and cruelty of the society I used to value so highly. She's my heartbreak when I think of what was done to her, to an innocent, by those I trusted so deeply, by those I supported so strongly. She's a project, inspiring endless attempts to groom her rich hair from its insane mass of tangles, to let her pretty face shine without the mask of fear and madness covering it.

When she flutters over the cargo bay in her battered pointe shoes I can't help but watch. She makes me remember times long ago, theatres, operas, stunning ballets performed by the finest the Core had to offer. Now she is a solitary dancer, skimming across the floor of a dirty ship that has seen better days. Her shoes are scuffed and the ribbons worn and I wonder how Simon thought to grab them when he finally freed her. I have seen the meagre bag of possessions they came aboard with, mainly medical supplies and a few articles of worn clothing. Her wardrobe has been expanded now, oversized threadbare sweaters and the beat up combat boots that look so funny on her slim dancer legs. The thought of him, terrified and young, leaving behind everything he'd ever known to save her, and still finding the time to grab her precious shoes simply breaks my heart.

She looks up at me from the cargo bay. She has that strange expression, the one that suddenly makes her young face look older and farseeing, and she cocks her head to one side. I wonder briefly if she knows who she learned that from.

"She is a solitary ballerina. Can't connect, can't be normal enough for a dance partner. But the gilded butterfly suits _pas de deux_, and her partner he waits and waits to be asked to dance."

I raise one perfect eyebrow, comprehending her meaning easily for once.

"_Mei mei,_ traditionally men ask the women to dance." River smiles that childlike smile, made all the more frightening when combined with her darkly hypnotic eyes.

"No place for tradition in the black." And with that she returns to her routine, arms perfectly supported as she extends out her long legs. I lean back, excused from further conversation, and ponder her words.

Never have I heard truer words be spoken. There is no place for tradition, for those remnants of _civility_ in the black. There is no place for gloss and beautifully scented lies. No wonder the girl loves this ship. Hunger means hunger, anger means anger. She is not fraught with the myriad of undertones, whispered secrets; lies are not dressed in their finest and paraded around like truths. She finds it freeing.

I should know. Perhaps I should go and find my own dance partner after all.

As I leave the cargo bay, determined to find my wayward partner, I ruminate on her claims of an eternally solitary existence. I wonder if she's ever noticed the eyes that follow her, the ears that prick up at the sound of her voice like a wary wolf. Mayhap her astute perception has yet to make the link, to reach the same conclusion I have reached over and over. Then again, she didn't see the way he had stared at her when those blast doors open.

I remember watching her as if in slow motion, still and alert, a blood spattered ballerina, my dreams of the Alliance and belief in unification perfectly represented in one haunting image. I am always grateful for the reminder of my past, one unadorned and simple, one beautiful solely because of its truth. She is broken, damaged, lost and confused. But she is also happy, whole, and perfect.

And if she can be, then maybe so can I.

She's my ballerina.

**A/N: **How are we travelling kids? I hope you're enjoying these, I'm finding it fun to step into the shoes of other characters than my usual repertoire (although damn if I can't seem to escape my Rayne roots!) Please review!


	3. Friend

**TITLE:** She's My Friend

**DISCLAIMER:** Still not mine.

She's my friend. She's my playmate, my confidant, my protector. As much as the latter makes me cringe, thinkin' on how she was hurt, thinkin' on how bad they was to her, I'm still grateful for her nonetheless. No power in the 'verse can stop her. I once took that as something terrifying, as if she thought we was still playin' a game. I should have known.

I ain't never claimed ta be the smartest, 'cepting when it came to machines. I ain't never had no schoolin' other than what my Pa gave me, and that always seemed enough. Cap'n always tells me he don't want me fightin', but that day at Niska's skyplex, that day I wished he did.

Least then I woulda known what ta do, woulda been able to look after myself 'stead of needin' a teenage girl ta do it fer me. Still, I wish I hadn't been afraid of her afterwards. I bet that hurt her, you can always see when it hurts her. After Early, and I'll be damned if I don't still shudder at what he said to me, I realized she wasn't crazy, least not in the way t'others were talkin' bout her.

Because crazy girls can't tell their friend to be brave, that it'll be ok, can't come up with plans to save everyone. Crazy girls don't laugh and giggle and look at you adoringly when you treat them like an equal, like a friend. Her brainpan might be a might addled, an' she ain't gonna be winning any "sane person of the month" awards, but she knows how ta love.

And that's all I've ever known how ta do either. I know how to love the ship, how to love her crew, how to love Simon. Even when the latter hurt me so bad, even when I still felt insecure and hurt whenever he put his foot in his mouth, even then I still loved. That's all River does too. She loves. She loves the ship, I seen her trailin' her hands across the sides like she's talkin' to it, seen her face light up when she sits in the engine room and watches me work.

She knows it's home, knows it's where she belongs, and iffen anyone can relate ta that I can. She reminds me that I'm a girl, that I can just talk and play, that I'm only 23 and that ain't near old enough to look sad all the time. And she makes me feel safe.

Now I know I ain't meant ta feel safe around government assassins who can read minds. I know I ain't meant to feel secure with her playin' with my hair or runnin' round the ship like a couple o' kids. But that girl ran through a set of frozen blast doors just to get her brothers med bag, just to save us. That girl took on a room full of Reaver's an' came out without a single scratch on her. That girl did exactly what her brother did – she threw everything away just fer us, just fer her crew.

And I know some people reckon it was just the trainin', reckon that it was only cuz o' what they did ta her mind that she ran through those doors. But ain't nobody in the world seen the fire in her eyes, the way she comforted her brother. That weren't trainin', that was her. She went in there just ta save us, and when the back wall blew out, when all them Alliance boys came pouring in with their guns pointed, I saw the way she looked back. She was ready to do it all again.

And if that don't make a friend, than I don't know what does. I ain't the smartest person in the 'verse, but I know this.

She's my friend.

**A/N:** Aww, she's just such a doll to write.


	4. Ward

**TITLE:** She's My Ward

**DISCLAIMER:** Not mine.

**A/N:** This one was hard to write, largely because I just find so much pain in what she must be going through that I can't bring myself not to give her a sliver of happiness.

She's my ward. Now that ain't somethin' I planned, sure as hell ain't somethin' I saw happenin'. 'Specially not when I first saw her shiverin' and naked, a threat to this boat just by her very existence. The girl might have a way of growin' on people, 'specially our soft hearted Captain, but there weren't no way she was gonna crawl under my skin. Only so much protection in the 'verse a body can be expected ta give, and even knowing how badly she suffered I still wasn't gonna give any piece of my heart over. It all belonged to him.

Even if before Miranda I could admit that she did have a way of growin' on folk, even if I was starting to feel something other than wariness for her, all that was burned up in Miranda. Seeing him like that, seeing my whole world shattered into a million pieces in a brief second, and knowin' that it was her actions that had led to it happenin', I wasn't just wary of her.

I hated her.

I hated every single bone in her body, every single particle of her being. This was her fault, and now she had the audacity to sit in that chair, to run her thin hands over his dinosaurs? I told the Captain I'd fly true, and that's what I was doing, but I never said nuthin' bout not hatin' her. She took away my everything, there wasn't enough hate in the world for her.

'Cept this little voice in the back of my head, one that sounded suspiciously like the one person I would give up everything for just to have another moment with, was telling me to look deeper, to wait. I had no clue what I was waiting for, but I couldn't stop myself listening. I didn't throw her off, didn't tell Mal to get rid of her or face losing me, didn't treat her or her brother any poorer. I just waited.

It came, two weeks after Miranda. I lock my bunk, _our_ bunk, every single night. A precaution from the war that wasn't going away anytime soon. Neither was the immediate waking up whenever a foreign sound occurred. So I had snapped awake only to find a pair of brown eyes staring at me calmly from the end of the bed. She held a bucket in one hand, a damp towel in the other.

I was about to start yelling. How dare she enter this space where he should be sleepin' beside me. How dare she intrude on my agony, waking me from dreams of loud shirts and laughter. I open my mouth to say all of this when the wave of nausea hits me. I retched forward into the clean bucket she was holding, shaking as my stomach purged itself of the protein we'd all consumed for dinner.

I looked back up at her, taking the towel with a shaking hand, wipin' my face, tryin' to regain my composure. Her eyes were calm but held a hint of pain, of regret.

"He'll like dinosaurs too."

And suddenly I was transported back to two weeks before Miranda. I had been collecting our washing, back when there was still two sets of washing to collect, when he'd dropped down into our bunk and kissed me soundly, pulling me to the bed. Later, sweating and panting I'd rolled into his arms, my head resting on his chest, smiling widely.

"And what brought that on, husband?" He'd grinned his easy grin, the one that warmed me from the top of my head right to my feet, and shrugged.

"River came up to me in the kitchen, she looked all wild eyed and crazified. Said somethin' bout right times, right places, chances that would soon be up. Said the ground was ready, said I had to leave a seed of me behind. I had no clue what she was saying, so she sighed all loud and impatient, like she gets with Simon. She said, 'go have sex with your wife'. Seemed like the sanest thing I'd heard all day."

She'd known. Even then she'd known something would happen, known we didn't have much time left. Her eyes held a regret that broke through any semblance of calm.

"She had no way to stop it, no way to save them all. But she thought, she hoped. One last piece of washing to collect."

I stared at her then, one of my hands travellin' to my stomach, the other to the pillow that his head should be resting on. She didn't have anythin' else she could do to stop it, so she'd tried to give us whatever she could.

I pulled her into my arms that night, and finally broke down into the sobbing mass I had fought so hard to avoid becoming. Tears of pain, tears of rage, tears of happiness and hope. I cried them all, soaking myself and her in my salty emotions. She simply stroked my hair, not saying a word, just letting me lose myself.

This girl, this teenage girl who had been so broken and brutalized, this girl saw things that she knew she couldn't change, held a burden nobody else could ever carry. She needed to be loved, to be protected, to be sheltered like the child now growing inside me. She didn't deserve a single ounce of pain, and that moment I swore she would never experience one as long as I was around.

Because she's my ward.


	5. Gift

**TITLE:** She's My Gift

**DISCLAIMER:** Not mine.

She's my gift. Always has been. From the moment she was brought home by the two people who loved us conditionally, she was mine. A beautiful present just for me, a source of all my happy childhood memories. I've never been able to be much of a talker, but I've always known I was born to be a big brother.

She would be teased and taunted by her peers; too smart, too athletic, too thin, too eloquent. Adults were little better, initially amused but then challenged and annoyed when confronted with a 6 year old who could correct their business plans. At least I could pretend, could be polite and answer the questions as if I was a show pony to be paraded around, a tribute to my parents own brilliance.

She was another matter, no child was meant to correct her text books, no adolescent girl was meant to know the stock market. Our parents, initially so pleased to have two brilliant children, rapidly realized that she wasn't normal. It wasn't just her intellect, her vocabulary, her talent for anything she turned her hand at. It was the way she would refuse to dissemble, would seemingly read the minds of their guests, asking wealthy men what a cathouse was and why would he want one?

The Academy had been a last resort. I had refused to allow them to give her away to some man thirty years her senior, to allow her to be trapped in some wealthy estate, to clip those incredible wings. So I'd done my research eventually finding the Academy, a perfect solution to both our parents problem child and my own brilliant sister.

She had been overjoyed, I remember her first few letters. Going into advanced classes, not being restricted in her learning, being put into ballet classes and something she thought was called "Initial Training". I'd been so happy for her until the letters had stopped and then changed.f

I still don't know how our parents couldn't see it, still find it hard to believe that status was more important to them than the truth. But maybe that's the whole point of my journey now – learning that there are things far more important. She was the first step, the easiest. I never wanted to turn back, never wanted to hesitate, just wanted her out of there.

I know that the girl I retrieved is still my sister. She may get lost in her own psyche, may experience the world in a series of twisted realities, may see the future and read minds like a medieval witch. But underneath all that, at the depth of her very bones, she is still River. Like muscle memory that can't ever be unlearned, she is still the same brilliant, beautiful, perfect gift my parents never realized they gave me.

And every day I see more of why she is a gift. When I look at my wife, the warm woman who doesn't long for finery and jewels, who only needs me to love her, I see the gift my sister gave me. When I sit at our ancient kitchen table, being passed bottles of god knows what and laughing raucously with my crewmates, I see the gift she gave me. When I feel myself being picked up from the glass laden floor of a bar and slung over the broad shoulders of the ape man who can't resist a good tussle, I see the gift she gave me.

If we had never come here, if we had never lost everything, I would never have found so much more. People who needed me, who did what's right rather than what's smart, who fought tooth and nail for the freedom I used to believe I had. But freedom isn't money and status, freedom isn't servants and endless halls of sparkling medical equipment. It's laughter and joy in little things. It's helping those on Rim planets who the Alliance has abandoned. It's a woman who loves you and a crew you'd willingly die for.

It's having a sister who would dive head first into a room full of the darkest monsters you have ever known, just to protect you. It's loving and being loved, wholly, unconditionally, just for being who you are. And she has given me all that. In all these years she has never stopped giving.

Because she's my gift.


	6. Everythin'

**TITLE:** She's My Everythin'

**DISCLAIMER:** Not mine.

**A/N:** Ah the end of this little series. Hope you enjoyed these slightly extended drabbles, many hugs to all!

She's my everythin'. Now I ain't one with words, always did prefer a good tussle and strong drink to conversationalizing. But I guess they gotta be said sometime, an' now seems as good a time as any. When the girl first came aboard, 'part from the nekkidness, I couldn't see a damn good thing that could come of her stayin' on.

Course it didn't help that her brother had his head up his _pi gu_ and the Alliance was on their tail. Guess it also didn't help that she was occasionally prone to some serious slashing of my own self. So a body can't be blamed if it looked like I was the last person on earth ta be sayin' any o' this.

But the girl is like a damn virus. Ain't necessarily her fault, she can't help all that long hair and those legs. But even if she is a fine piece of pretty it's still strange ta be confronted wit' all that crazy wrapped up in one little person.

Course, that was before I seen her jump through them blast doors.

Gotta admit, it got kinda hard ta look at her like a little crazy girl after that. Ain't no little girl who stood there when them doors was open, ain't no little girl who held them blades, who felled all them monsters. Not sure what that was, but it sure weren't no little girl.

It was a weapon, a damn shiny one too.

Now, anybody who knows me knows I can't go past a good weapon. 'Specially not when it's got legs up to here and a mind like quicksilver. But it also had a fearsome roundhouse and a brother who knew needles all manner of well. So it took me a while ta add it ta the arsenal, so ta speak.

Actually, I'm man 'nuff ta admit that she kinda did the adding. Seems unfair ta 'xpect a man ta say no when he's cornered in his own bunk by all that bare girl skin an' long curly hair.

Yeah yeah Ma, I'll get ta the point.

Point is, pretty soon I realized it weren't just the sexin'.

Ma, quit interruptin'.

Girl got's a sense of humour that's like ta make me blush, an' all manner o' shiny know how when it comes ta firearms and fightin'. Helps too that she's a gorram Reader, means I ain't gotta 'xplain e'ry lil thing I'm tryin' ta say. Keeps me from actin' like her fool brother when it comes ta talkin'.

She's my gun, my laughter, my right hand, my mate. She makes me wanna be better jus' so's I can stand next ta her proudly. Makes me wanna spend the rest o' my life showin' her how ruttin' grateful I am that she chose me. She don' care that I ain' all that smart, cuz she knows she got's enough smarts fer the both o' us.

Shiny as it is ta be callin' her my wife today, it don't seem to really cover everythin' the girl is ta me. So I guess I can just wrap it up with this.

She's my everythin'.

**A/N: **Thanks for reading guys!


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